NCJ Number
179068
Date Published
1997
Length
189 pages
Annotation
This book discusses the historical, social, cultural, and legal organization of rape; the prevalence and incidence of rape and sexual assault; characteristics of rape victims, offenders, and the context of date rape; public perceptions of sexual intercourse; theories and models that address forced sexual intercourse; and a preliminary model proposed by the authors.
Abstract
The chapter on the historical, social, cultural, and legal organization of rape considers women's roles in society, historical definitions and punishments of rape, contemporary definitions and punishments of rape in the United States, courtship and dating, violence and aggression in courtship and marriage, and changes in rape laws. The chapter on the prevalence and incidence of rape and sexual assault addresses official estimates and contemporary research on their prevalence and incidence. Another chapter discusses the general characteristics of rape victims and rapists, with attention to the interactional and situational factors involved in date rape, which is considered the most common but less addressed type of rape. A chapter on public perceptions of sexual intercourse considers attitudes toward date rape, degree of force, the nature of the relationship between the offender and victim, situational factors, victim characteristics, sex-role socialization and stereotyping, and rape-myth acceptance. A chapter on theories and models that address forced sexual intercourse is followed by the concluding chapter, which presents a preliminary model of a three-category typology for forced sexual intercourse. It suggests that each of the following three types of forced sexual intercourse should be viewed as different behaviors rather than as different degrees of a single behavior: stranger rape; predatory rape by pretending to engage in legitimate dating behavior; and date rape, in which the man enters into legitimate dating behavior that evolves into the use of force to gain sexual access from an unwilling woman. A 342-item bibliography and subject and author indexes